A large corporate tradeshow set to take place just outside Minneapolis in late February was canceled three weeks out by the host because of safety concerns related to the surge in Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity across the greater Minneapolis area.
According to an article in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the annual three-day Frostbike event was to be hosted by Quality Bike Products, which is North America’s biggest bike-products distributor. The event was scheduled to happen at the company’s Bloomington headquarters, 10 miles south of downtown Minneapolis.
Frostbike attracts several hundred company suppliers and retailers plus media and others in that industry.
The company was monitoring the tense situation around federal immigration enforcement in the region, and decided that the atmosphere was not right to hold a productive event, according to Rich Tauer, president of the firm.
“This decision [to cancel] did not come easy, and it was not the one we wanted to make,” he said in a prepared statement. “But we recognize if the current enforcement activities make it unsafe for some of our attendees to travel to the Twin Cities, then the event is not safe for all attendees.”
The company did not disclose its specific financial loss from the cancellation, but called it “not insignificant.”
Which Cities Are Next?
While ICE chief Tom Homan announced February 12 that the concentrated enforcement operation in the Minneapolis area will soon conclude, ICE has been expanding its physical footprint across the U.S.
According to an article in Wired, ICE has more than 150 new office locations and warehouses leased in cities across the country, establishing operations related to enforcement, detention and processing.
Homan noted that these actions are part of a broader strategy to embed ICE enforcement locally, which speaks to a longer-term issue that business-event planners will have to consider in any destinations set to host their upcoming meetings.
Hotels, restaurants and other hospitality-industry operations could be a target for concentrated ICE activity, which could affect labor availability in many cities while possibly bringing protesters into downtown areas.
Planners should communicate frequently with their host properties ahead of their meetings to understand the local situation as it relates to ICE activity.
